MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

12/11 Boras and the Cubs

If Cubs fans are upset at how long it’s taking the team to complete its rebuilding process, they have a friend in agent Scott Boras.

“The idea is it’s going to take some time for them to reach the resolve to say that they’re going to compete on all fronts to win a division or build a franchise,” Boras told reporters at the baseball Winter Meetings on Wednesday when asked about the Cubs.

“Obviously, it’s internal and I know the fans and baseball [operations] people have a plan afoot,” Boras said. “It’s just that normally with major market teams, you see a little bit different approach than you see here [with the Cubs]. This is more of a small-market approach if you will.”

The Cubs’ plan since Theo Epstein took over as president of baseball operations prior to the 2012 season is to develop their own players in an effort to build a solid foundation of homegrown talent. That includes two of Boras’ clients, Albert Almora and Kris Bryant.

“I think everybody knows that we have great respect for their baseball people there,” Boras said of the Cubs’ front office. “They’ve done a great job in the Draft. They know what they’re doing. The real thing has nothing to do the baseball people or how the organization is run. It’s just the fact that you have a major market team that has dramatically more revenues than most clubs that do take this type of approach.

“The Cubs have the capacity to sign any player they want in baseball,” Boras said. “The question is whether they think it fits their plan.”

Epstein said he had a great relationship with Boras and seemed more amused by the comments.

“It’s not the first time an agent has used the media to try to compel a team into spending huge amounts of money without knowledge of that club’s financial situation,” Epstein said. “It’s not a surprise and we’re not going to get into a war of words with Scott other than to say the folks who work at the Cubs probably have a better understanding of our situation than he does. We look forward to working with him and to continue to sign his players.”

— Carrie Muskat

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8 Comments

Boras is just mad he cannot use the Cubs for leverage against another team in signing his clients……….Cubs are not into signing major free agents……..not this year……..check back this time next year…………..Boras knows many of his minority clients might flee fromhim for Cano’ agent.

Scott Boris could not be more accurate! The Chicago Cubs should be building with drafting , trading and signing my major-league ready players. Unfortunately, they forgot about two of the three. This way of doing business will take two times longer! Top five baseball organization being cheap as usual! I’m a lifelong fan and truly disappointed!

If Boris is accurate, then what does that make Natasha? I love it when people spell a name wrong when the name itself is in the headline of the story they are commenting on! If you truly are a lifelong fan, then I’m sure you remember 7 years ago when the Cubs spent like crazy, made a few trades, were good but did nothing in the playoffs, then were stuck with a bunch of old, overpaid, and frequently injured players that caused them to sink to the bottom of the league. That’s what ultimately got Jim Hendry fired and led to the new front office with the new plan. Now the new front office wants to do all three too. But they know that the absolute first thing you need to do is to have a strong minor league system. And they know you can’t get a strong minor league system with just one draft. Plus, you don’t want to just spend money for the sake of spending money. Seattle has made some big moves this offseason, but even with that spending, is anyone calling them the favorites to win the World Series? How about the AL Pennant? How about just their division? I’d still take the Rangers and the A’s over the Mariners in the AL West. If the Cubs went crazy and signed Cano and Ellsbury, would they be better? Sure. Would they be better than the Cardinals? Nope. Wait until guys like Baez and Bryant are up and producing at the Major League level. Then you make your big splash. Do it preemptively and you run into the same problems you faced in the post-3-and-out playoff appearance years. Don’t listen to Boris or Boras. His job is to make his clients a lot of money, not to give the Cubs advice on how to run their organization. Theo & Co. have clearly stated their plan and are in the process of playing it out. Let’s see it through and give them the chance to succeed or fail before we hit the panic button!

I understand where you are coming from Doug but I look at it a bit different. We got some real good prospects coming up and we both agree on that but what I don’t agree on is that we can just flip the switch in one offseason and say we are contending for the division or heck the wild card. I liked the signing of Jackson last year bc it was a sign that we were going to add a piece or two each year (still could happen this year). We need to add pieces that would help us win when they come available. Not when its the best time for us because at that time there may not be a good option available and it wastes even more time. Also you add pieces now to get the team to a competitive so when those young guys come up and are ready to contribute you don’t waste there time of team control THUS lower your cost of winning because those young guys are that much cheaper. Some people just got to remember that bad deals happen and trying to go on the cheap isn’t going to prevent every bad deal. They still will happen. The goal should be to spend wisely, take care of our players the best we can, and increase the revenue any way possible to help reduce the hurt of those bad deals. Im not saying we should spend 300 mill on this or that guy but if the right piece comes along ( which I think Tanaka is) we should be shooting high so we get that piece because WE CAN… we have the money…

I get what you’re saying, and I wouldn’t be opposed to signing a big free agent if it made sense from a financial and a roster standpoint, but what about this free agency period has made sense? $150 million to an over-30 outfielder whose feet are about to fall off? $220 million to an over-30 Robinson Cano? $50 million to a guy just coming off of a steroid suspension? None of those guys would fit in with the Cubs plan as it stands right now. Theo has said multiple times that he wants to pay his players based on projected future performance, not past performance alone. Sure, maybe Ellsbury and Cano will be worth their yearly salary this year, but what about 2015 and beyond? Alfonso Soriano is a perfect example of that. He got a big deal from the Cubs after a monster season. He played well in his first two seasons, but regressed overall and had some injury issues and didn’t live up to the rest of the deal. If the Cubs had won the World Series in 2007 or 2008, that would have been fine. But they didn’t, so Cubs fans spent the next 4.5 seasons wondering why he was ever signed and what it would take to get rid of him before his contract was up. I know it’s tough seeing other teams make big moves while the Cubs just tinker, but at the same time we should be happy that Theo has stuck to his plan and seems to be seeing it through, rather than trying to assemble a roster by the seat of his pants year in and year out.

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